Christine Quinn Takes New York

Few politicians wield as much national clout as the mayor of New York. The favorite to succeed Michael Bloomberg is City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. This tough-talking daughter of a union man would be the first woman to run the place. It's about time.

The first time I meet Christine Quinn, she's on a street ­corner in Brooklyn, mixing it up with an enormously large man in a neon T-shirt and fake diamond earrings. Or, as she would say, a constituent. He flagged her down on her way into Brooklyn Law School—where she's about to give a speech about the legislation she got passed to keep ­women from being harassed on their way into abortion ­clinics—with the hard-to-resist, "I see you on TV all the time!" She ­extends her hand. "Good to see you. I'm Chris."

"I didn't know you looked so gooood!" he says. "You know, when you be on TV, you look kinda big."

"I went on a diet," she replies crisply. "Thanks very much."

"What are you again?" he asks.

"Christine Quinn. I'm the speaker of the city council."

"Oh! Okay." Now she's talkin'. He tells her his name is Dwight, and he wants to know what she's gonna do for him if she becomes mayor of New York City, because that Bloomberg guy is doing shit for him. He's unemployed, he has no health care; basically, his life sucks. "Why is it hard for a fucking disabled to get a job?" he asks.

"I'm trying hard to get a job, why is this so hard?" He tells her how he went to Goodwill, how he went to some city program, how he called his congressman. "Nobody wants to help you, 'cause I'm big and overweight. That's another problem."

"What kind of work did you do before?" she asks.

He used to work for a street vendor, but the dude got sick. "Every­body give me the runaround. I went to Goodwill—"

"Yeah, yeah, I already got that," she says in her rapid-delivery Long Island twang. "Okay, take this card. Call this person in the morning. She will help you."

"And who can I say referred me?" Dwight asks.

"Me!" says Christine Quinn.

"I'm gonna hold you to it. If not, I'm gonna call Channel 11! I be howlin'," he tells her.

"See ya later, Dwight."

"Hey," he shouts as she walks away. "Go get 'em!"

Sometimes you have to wonder why anyone would want to be mayor of New York.

It took a man tweeting photos of his penis to young lovelies from coast to coast to pave the way for the first possible ­woman ­mayor of New York, who just happens to be a lesbian. Until last spring, when Democratic congressman Anthony ­Weiner of New York imploded, so to speak, he was the odds-on bet to succeed Michael Bloomberg in one of the most powerful, prestigious, and high-profile jobs in the country. Aside from Weiner's then reputation as a smart, dogged public servant, there was reason for excitement about his mayoralty: his wife, the accom­plished and glam Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's closest aide. What could be cooler, New Yorkers wondered, than a Jewish mayor with a Muslim wife? Um, maybe a lesbian mayor with a wife? Who, incidentally, might also restore the sanctity (or at least the dignity) of ­marriage to Gracie Mansion, after 12 years of the Billionaire Bachelor (who, despite his steady, Diana Taylor, is rumored to have a pillow on his bed that says something to the effect of, "How many single billionaires are there?") and, ­before that, the public philanderer Rudy Giuliani?

Quinn cracks up, then quickly stops herself, when I throw this at her. For the record, she's yet to announce her candidacy for mayor, but everyone on the planet, which is to say New York City, knows that the likelihood of her not running is about the same as that of Weiner sending another peenie tweet anytime soon.

She's already raised more than $4.9 million (the limit for the primary, if she takes matching funds) 19 months out from the election. And she's working on the wife part, too. She and partner Kim Catullo, a corporate lawyer whom she met on a blind date in fall 2001 (the first time she'd gone out after 9/11), are planning a spring wedding. "A quiet one," Chris says. Unlike her beloved, Kim is media shy. That might have to change, stat.

One day this winter, I tag along with Quinn on a whirlwind tour of the outer boroughs. "Whaddaya mean, you've ­never been to the Bronx?" she rapid-fires. "We need to fix that." ("We need to fix that" is one of her favorite phrases.)

The Chrismobile, a big, black SUV, is idling on my corner in Hell's Kitchen—which is in her district and ­frankly could use more attention from her—promptly at 7:45 a.m. Her lush red hair is beautifully coiffed. "Thank you! I did it myself this morning. It's rooting terribly, so it's highly sprayed to cover the gray." Now, Andrew Cuomo, she says, "has good hair. Always good hair." She talks so fast, my tape recorder is already ­exhausted. "I just dropped the dogs off at day care," she continues. She and Kim have two rescued Lab mutts, Sadie and Justin. "We take them to that place on 25th Street with the absurd name of New York Dog Spa and Hotel. We pulled up, and Meghan was like, `Seriously?' "

Meghan Linehan, who previously worked for both Hillary and Bill, is Quinn's "body person," as the position is known in political parlance. Chris, though, prefers to call her by her official title, traveling deputy chief of staff. The rest of the entourage includes two NYPD detectives (one drives; the other rides shotgun) and Jamie McShane, a former CNN producer who's now her spokesperson but who says "she's really more like a sister."

Our first stop is a neighborhood north of Harlem where her grandparents lived, and where the Washington Heights/­Inwood Chamber of Commerce is waiting for her at an Irish ­restaurant called Coogan's. On the way, she fields updates on the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is in full-blown-­hostility mode this morning, thanks in part to Bloomberg's kinglike deci­sion a few nights ago to "evacuate" the protesters in a surprise overnight raid. It's as good a time as any to ask Quinn to ­address the biggest rap against her—that she's in Bloomberg's hip ­pocket, in large part because she seems to be the only successor who ­excites him. It's Quinn he trots out to stand by his honorable side time and time again, from the passionate speech he gave against the backdrop of the Statue of Liberty defending the building of a mosque near Ground Zero to grand openings of off-Broadway theaters.

How would Mayor Quinn—a woman who's been arrested at least a half dozen times, including at the St. Patrick's Day Parade for protesting its policy of forbidding gays to "march openly"—have ­handled Occupy Wall Street? "I would have certainly been much more vocal in my sympathy, empathy, and agreement with their fears," she says. "You can be supportive of the message of Occupy Wall Street without saying, `Wall Street is bad.' "

As opposed to what Mike did, which, I suggest, just reinforced people's belief that he has an elitist attitude.

"Correct. Correct. Right."

No one would accuse Chris Quinn of having an elitist attitude, but she definitely knows how to shake down Bloomberg's wealthy Wall Street and developer pals for her campaign war chest. That's one of the issues that will likely come back to bite her as the race continues. (It's New York—nothing's a cakewalk.) And she'll probably get slammed not only for being too cozy with Manhattan's powers that be, but also, paradoxically, for her willingness to champion the poor and marginalized. But so far, ­early polls show Quinn at the top of the heap among announced or possible mayoral contenders (the only exception being her pal Police ­Commissioner Ray Kelly, who insists he's not running).

Quinn's central political and rhetorical challenge will be to set herself apart from the current mayor without alienating him. ­According to a September 2011 poll, nearly half of the city's registered voters say an endorsement from Bloomberg would make them less likely to vote for a candidate, while only 30 percent said it would improve the chances.

Over the days I spend with Quinn, she'll point out a great many ways in which she and Bloomberg disagree, from his denial of shelter to single people who can't prove they're homeless (she and the city council sued him over that) to his rule that food-stamp recipients be fingerprinted ("cruel and punitive," Quinn says). "Sometimes there might be a raised voice or two, but it's never personal, never disrespectful. Look, I don't like when the mayor disagrees with me, and I'm sure he feels the same way, but that's life. You just gotta figure out a way around it."

So is the rap that she's Bloomie's toady unfair? "I don't know if it's fair or unfair. What makes me more concerned is that it's a sad statement of how the media and people see politics. It's so surprising to people that here are two individuals who are very different, who come from different places, that we can work together." Which is what the public is always saying they want, no? "But when they get it, it's like somebody walked in a pink elephant. People seem so thrown off by it, they almost ­recoil at the existence of exactly what they say we need."

But to be clear: She supported Mike's move to extend term limits, which paved the way for his third term as mayor, as well as his unsuccessful attempt to institute "congestion pricing" to make motorists pay more to enter parts of Manhattan. But she blocked his pet plan to build a sports stadium over the West Side rail yards. As for his controversial "nanny initiatives," she agreed with the smoking ban in city parks but is agnostic on the no-salt thing and the proliferation of bike lanes and the weird tables he set up in the middle of Broadway, transforming the street into an ad hoc (some might say ugly) plaza. Unlike Mike, she promises never to try to speak (bad) Spanish. After one of his terror-alert press ­conferences, Quinn says, laughing, "He was like, `Let me ­summarize this for the Spanish speakers.' And I was like, `Oh, God, no, don't speak Spanish!' "

We pass the old Museum of the American Indian, where her father, a union shop steward, took her as a little girl. "No one was ever in the museum, and it was not so well curated, truth be told, but there were drawers and drawers and drawers of stuff all covered with dust—" She suddenly tells the driver to stop. "What is that litter situation there?" She is pointing to a gross mountain of garbage spilling out of bags in front of a supermarket.

"Looks like my neighborhood," I crack.

"Really? Well, we should call the sanitation department." Heh, good luck. "What's your street again?" I remind her that it's in her district. And now she's on the horn, sending cleanup crews to both Inwood and my 'hood. (Who knew it was so easy?)

We pull up to Coogan's. The owners, a coupla old white guys, and some local dignitaries (a coupla more old white guys) are waiting on the sidewalk to greet the speaker. They each get a big smooch. "Mwah," she says, kissing their cheeks. The men are ­besotted. Mayor Mike isn't exactly a kisser.

Inside, it's a full house of constituents, eating bacon and eggs at linen-covered tables. Before she gives her remarks, she works the room, greeting almost every person at every table by name and familiar niceties. ("How's your mother?" "Did that situation we talked about last time work out for you?") This is Quinn in her element—the regular gal who "likes a good diner" and who can be tough and gruff (her two Bloombergian qualities) but also (and sometimes simultaneously) warm and huggy, if not ­always kissy. Who punctuates her conversations with phrases like, "Yah, no problem," and "Oh, Jesus Christ!" and "That was a shit show." Who wawks and tawks and pronounces words like fancy with at least three syllables. The day before our first meeting, she got blasted in the press for visibly chewing gum at an event with Bloomberg. But there are a lot of people in New York who ­happen to like a gum-cracking kind of girl, particularly one who can also hold forth with wonky ease on everything from housing policy and property taxes to poop rules at the dog runs.

The woman who would be mayor grew up mostly in Glen Cove, Long Island, which accounts for the accent. Her ­mom, whom she adored and who worked for Catholic Charities, died of breast cancer when Christine was 16, and her friends say the loss still stings, and "drives her," according to a close aide. "She doesn't want to waste a minute of opportun­ity," the kind her ­mother never had. "I'm in a position," she says, "where if you have the ability, you should use it well. To get things done. My mom suffered terribly the last 10 years of her life. She got sick when she was 46, and I'm 45—you see that life could end at any moment."

It was a bond she had instantly with her girlfriend, who lost her own mother at 17. Neither of their fathers—Kim's Italian dad or Chris' Irish dad—remarried, and today, much to their daughters' delight, the two dads are close buds.

I ask if there was ever a time when she wasn't openly gay. "No, not really," she says. "I mean, I wasn't when I wasn't aware of `the situation.' But once I became fully aware and accepted it, then yes." That was in her midtwenties. And was it always fine with her dad? "Um, you know, everything's an evolution." She smiles. "The first time I told him, he said, `Never say that again!' But it's gotten better." The 85-year-old Mr. Larry Quinn has a desk downstairs from his daughter's City Hall ­office. An unpaid volunteer, he runs errands and gets keys made, but "basically he just reads the newspapers," says Chris, laughing.

Quinn has eclectic tastes in clothes and jewelry—much of it bought for her by Kim, who scours jewelers on the ­Lower East Side for finds. Chris is also known to show up at black-tie events in plunging-neck ball gowns, while Kim prefers tailored suits. One thing Quinn ­never takes off is the engagement ring Kim had made for her shortly after the gay-marriage bill passed in New York last ­summer. "This was her mother's engagement ring," says Quinn, her eyes filling up. Kim had it reset with sapphires, "which is the birthstone of the month we met, September. She totally surprised me, because we said we weren't gonna do engagement rings."

In one of our jaunts around the outer boroughs, I ask Quinn when she decided she wanted to be mayor. "Well, we haven't made anything public yet...." Loud guffaws from everyone in the SUV. "But, um, the only thing I ever wanted to do was be involved in politics and government. Which I attribute almost exclusively to the library at my parish elementary school, St. Patrick's." There was a shelf of paperback biographies of "political people, famous people, and famous women"—from Susan B. Anthony to JFK—"and I loved these books. I read them till they were dog-eared."

In some ways, it seems like she already is mayor. There's Christine on Rachel Maddow's show, calling for a citywide parade to honor Iraq vets (which Bloomberg nixed when the Pentagon told him to wait). There's Chris, announcing a plan for mandatory kindergarten in her very own state of the city speech. It helps that most of her positions are, well, reasonable. Who can argue with parades for soldiers and better-educated five-year-olds?

After college at Trinity in Hartford, Connecticut, Quinn got her first job as a housing and tenant organizer in Manhattan and for a while thought that she could make more of a difference as a community organizer than a politician. But eventually she realized that was "kind of naive."

Her first campaign was in 1999, to fill the city council seat of Tom Duane, who was elected to state senate and for whom she'd been chief of staff between organizing gigs. It was a four-way race, and she won handily. From then on, Quinn continued to be overwhelmingly reelected in her district, which­ ­includes Chelsea and Greenwich Village. In 2005, at 39, she set her sights on being the first female council speaker—arguably the second most powerful role in city government and a gig that requires a majority vote among the 51 council ­members, many of whom hail from parts of New York that, shall we say, aren't used to women running the show, let alone an out ­lesbian woman. And a great many made their position known: Fine for Chelsea, but surely she couldn't ­represent all of New York City!

"People used to feel oddly empowered to tell me all the reasons I couldn't win," says Quinn one night, over dinner at a favorite Chelsea haunt. "Because I was a woman. Because I was a ­lesbian. Because I was from the West Side of Manhattan." She refused to be deterred. She figured, she says, that "maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong, but if you don't try, you won't find out."

Her colleagues elected her speaker by an almost unanimous vote. "One person abstained, and one person went to the bathroom" right before his name was called, she says, laughing.

It's rarer and rarer that Quinn has to enlighten someone, especially since marriage equality was passed in New York. (Neither Quinn nor Governor Cuomo, a huge fan of the speaker, calls it "gay marriage.") And pity the ­person who ­crosses her. "There was a piece of legislation once, a benefits bill in ­Albany, where someone sought my support. It covered spouses, but it didn't cover domestic partners, and when I asked him why, he said they hadn't really thought about that, but being gay was ­perfectly fine with them. I told him I didn't give a rat's ass what was `fine' with them. Don't ever come ask me to support legislation that excludes me from it. He tried to make a case why I should still bid for his bill, and I told him it wasn't happenin'."

Whether she'll be happenin' outside of the liberal comfort zone of Manhattan and in the outer boroughs, which accounted for 75 percent of the vote in the 2009 mayoral election, remains to be seen. But I'd venture to argue that people don't give a rat's ass if she's a lesbian. New Yorkers just want their trash picked up and their streets plowed. It was a lesson Mayor Mike learned a year into his hard-fought third term when he botched the blizzard of the century and his approval ratings fell precipitously. Quinn is fully aware of the lingering anger in the boroughs over this, which is one reason we seem to spend a lot of time in the Bronx and ­Staten Island. ("Do not tell me you've never been to Staten ­Island." I know, I know. We gotta fix that. And we do.)

On some of our travels, "the lesbian thing," far from being a hindrance, is presented as an asset. Back at Coogan's, she's introduced by Chamber of Commerce president ­Peter Walsh thusly: "She's our first gay elected official in her ­position, so she has an empathy for the things that go on in this city that I don't think the present administration has. And it's an ­empathy you need to be able to say, `What if I was that person?' "

She talks about "incubators" (the kind that grow small businesses) and how to keep kids from ending up at McDonald's for employment or dinner, before heading off to the Jewish Y in Riverdale, where she meets a clutch of local officials and ­rabbis. And is, dare I say, flirty with all the old Jewish guys. She tells them she can't wait for the "Shalom and Shamrock" party. They praise her for going after Bloomberg about the food-stamp fingerprinting and for being fiscally conservative "without being unkind." But the recession has hurt Riverdale, and they need her help. At the soup kitchens, for instance. "Though we don't call them soup kitchens," says one man. "They're kosher, free restaurants to people in need." And it's almost Thanksgiving.

"Do you need some turkeys?" she asks. "How many turkeys do you need? Seriously, I can get you some turkeys."

They need 200. Done.

Although...lots of the people who need them really don't want a whole turkey. They'd rather a turkey breast. "Is that better?" asks Chris. "A breast is better? Then we'll get you breasts." Oy vey.

And then we're off to the Hilton Garden Inn on Staten Island, where 1,000-plus jubilant women, including Miss New York (and a few token men, including Dr. Oz), are crammed into the ballroom, dressed to the nines in jewel-tone suits and pouffed hair, for the fiftieth annual Women of Achievement Awards Luncheon, sponsored by a local newspaper. Quinn manages to dazzle with her remarks, even though she starts by reminding the crowd that Staten Island has problems with smoking and obesity, and well, we gotta fix that. Between speeches, she gets up from the head table to schmooze. "I knew her when she had brown hair!" says Staten Island councilman Jimmy Oddo. She's working the room with such intensity that she doesn't even seem to notice when a little man, who arrived in a big car, enters the ballroom.